"em" writes:

Eric's comment made me want to bring up the subject of doing low-carb
on a budget:

"Eric" wrote i
We're talking at least six dollars a
day if you try to eat 2000 calories in meat and fish with some level
of variety. That adds up to some serious bread, doesn't it?

$6/day is hardly "serious bread," is it? If you buy fast food or eat in
restaurants or cafeterias *at all*, you're going to average more than
that. If you can't squeeze out $200/month for the right food (I've been
there), then that's a separate issue you need to get handled. I'm a
cheap *******, but I don't flinch at spending $200-300 on food for
myself every month. Sometimes you do get what you pay for, after all.

It's true that you *can* eat high-carb cheaper than low-carb, because
grains tend to be very cheap (partly due to government subsidies), but
most overweight people who come to low-carb aren't leaving behind a diet
of ramen noodles and rice. More likely they're leaving behind pizza,
pastries, subs, TV dinners, chips, and plenty of other expensive
processed foods. Low-carb foods don't have to cost more than those
processed high-carb foods, as long as you're willing to do your own
preparation and cooking. If you're smart about it, you can have steak
and salad at home cheaper than a Happy Meal or a big bag of Doritos.

As someone else mentioned, eggs may have the best nutrition/cost ratio
of any food there is. Even if you pay a little more for eggs that
didn't come from a factory farm, you can get them for 20 cents or less
each. Fry 4-5 in a pat of butter, and you've got breakfast for under
$1. I get hamburger and pork sausage from a local butcher in bulk for
well under $2/pound, so I can have a couple quarter-pounders with mayo
and mustard for lunch for another $1 or less. I watch for sales on
canned goods like mushrooms, so I can toss them into dishes like
omelettes or meatloaf for maybe 10 cents/serving.

Some things are harder to find cheap. Nuts are just plain expensive,
but if you can find them in large quantities and raw, they're a lot
cheaper than a few ounces roasted in a can--sometimes less than half the
price. Roast a whole bunch and freeze them. Cheese can be expensive,
but around here it goes on sale regularly, so when it does, I buy up
several pounds and freeze them. I only pay $1-1.50/pound for cheese
that way. Some salad fixin's don't keep long enough to stock up when
they're on sale, so I tend to eat a lot of salads when lettuce is on
sale, and then take a break from them when it's not. I get bored with
salads if I eat them all the time anyway.

It may also help to buy directly from local growers. A lot of people
who sell eggs, meat, or garden produce do it because they enjoy it or
have a surplus, so they don't necessarily charge much. Even if you end
up paying as much as you would at the grocery store, you can get a much
better product. There's also the option of having your own garden, if
you have a place for it. $25 in seeds can turn into a heck of a lot of
food.



--
Aaron -- 285/254/200 -- aaron.baugher.biz